PATRIOTS: Lack of production has offensive coordinator seeing red

Patriots offensive coordinator-quarterbacks coach Josh McDaniels is well aware that the team's 50-percent success rate in the red zone needs to improve over the second half of the season.

Glen Farley The Enterprise @GFarley_ent

Pass Josh McDaniels the Visine.

He’s seeing red.

“It’s not one thing,” the Patriots’ offensive coordinator- quarterbacks coach said of the team’s red-zone woes. “It never is in our game, unfortunately. If it was one thing, it would be easy to fix.

“It’s a lot of people under standing their job and doing their thing on each play the right way to its completion and hopefully you string together a lot of those during the course of a series down there in the red zone. We’ve been down in the red zone a ton and that’s a good thing.”

The results of trips inside the opponent’s 20-yard-line haven’t been so good: A 50 percent success rate (17 touch downs in 34 trips) has the Patriots tied for 17th in the league; too often they’ve have had to summon Stephen Gostkowski (14 of his 20 field goals this season the result of trips into the red zone).

“Red area, we’ve been get ting stopped quite a bit, just kicking field goals,” tight end Rob Gronkowski said. “We had six field-goal attempts last game, so I would say we’ve got to improve in that area for sure – finishing the drive and putting points up on the board.”

A 1-for-4 performance in their most recent game, their 21-13 win over the Los Angeles Chargers, put them at 3 for 9 in their last two games.

In spite of that, the Patriots rank seventh in the league in scoring (27.0 points per game) and managed to win their last four while averaging 21.8 PPG to improve to 6-2 at their bye.

“We’re going to continue to work hard at that … and continue to focus on that,” said McDaniels, “and we have a strong belief that we can make something that hasn’t necessarily been a strength of ours into a strength the second half of the season through a lot of hard work, and our guys are com mitted to it.”

A variety of factors have contributed to the problem.

“We’re not scoring as many points as we’re capable of scoring,” quarterback Tom Brady said. “I know that. I wish there was a simple answer for it, and the simple word would be execution. I mean, it’s just throw ing and catching and blocking and running and doing all those things, staying on track in the red area, but we have more opportunity out there. I mean, we know it.

“We just haven’t done a great job finishing off the last three or four weeks, but hope fully we’re going to get back to it, and I’m sure we’ll watch a lot of tape and try to evaluate a lot of things that we’ve done and try to build on those things. I wish it would be better, but we’re not. But, we’ll just keep going after it. We’ll keep work ing hard like we always do, and hopefully it’ll be better here in the next couple of weeks.”

The Patriots’ inability to consistently convert in short- yardage situations has been a glaring weakness as well, one that has contributed to the problem.

A season-long issue, that dates to the 42-27 loss to Kansas City on opening night when Mike Gillislee, whose 5.7-yard average with Buffalo led the NFL last year, scored three touchdowns but was twice stopped on short-yardage situations on fourth down, the first time in the first quarter at the Chiefs’ 10-yard line.

“As a group, we have to do a hell of a lot better,” running backs coach Ivan Fears said. “It’s not one guy, it never is usually one guy. It’s everybody and we have to do a hell of a lot better. We haven’t done as well as we should.

“Mike is my biggest back, my strongest runner, so I’m going to give him a shot at it first. If somebody has a chance to run through and make a play, he’s got a chance as far as physically running through a guy. But everybody, the whole group, has to get it done.”

“We were terrible (in short-yardage situations) the first two games and it’s gotten better since then,” offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia said, “but that’s an area of situation al football that we have to be really good at.”

Glen Farley may be reached at gfarley@enterprise news.com. Follow him on Twit ter at @GFarley_ent.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.